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BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE 

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS 
ON EDUCATION 



BY 

WILLIAM SUDDARDS FRANKLIN 



SOUTH BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA 
FRANKLIN, MACNUTT and CHARLES 

PUBLISHERS OF EDUCATIONAL BOOKS 
I913 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 19 13 
By William S. Franklin 



FEB I! 1914 



PRESS OF 

THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY 

LANCASTER, PA. 

(g)CI.A:561031 



Dedicated 

TO A University 

supported and controlled 

by the people of 

Pennsylvania. 



Ill 



The time will come when men will think of nothing but 
education. Nietsche. 



PREFACE. 

The greater part of the essay, BilVs School 
and Mine, was written in 1903, but the title and 
some of the material were borrowed from my 
friend and college mate William Allen White 
in 191 2, when the essay was printed in the South 
Bethlehem Globe to stimulate interest in a local 
Playground Movement. 

The second essay, The Study of Science, is 
taken from Franklin and MacNutt's Elements 
of Mechanics, The Macmillan Company, New 
York, 1908. I have no illusions concerning the 
mathematical sciences, for it is to such that the 
essay chiefly relates. Unquestionably the most 
important function of education is to develop 
personality and character; but science is imper- 
sonal, and an essay which attempts to set forth 
the meaning of science study must make an 
unusual demand upon the reader. Some things 
in this world are to be understood by sympathy, 
and some things are to be understood by serious 
and painful effort. 

The third essay. Part of an Education, was 
privately printed in 1903 under the title A 



VI PREFACE. 

Tramp Trip in the Rockies, and it is introduced 
here to illustrate a phase of real education 
which is in danger of becoming obsolete. The 
school of hardship is not for those who love 
luxury, and to the poverty stricken it is not a 
school — it is a Juggernaut. 

The five minor essays are mere splashes, as it 
were; but in each I have said everything that 
need be said, except perhaps in the matter of 
exhortation. 

For the illustrations I am under obligations to 
my cousin Mr. Daniel Garber of Philadelphia. 
William Suddards Franklin. 

South Bethlehem, Pa., 
October 22, 191 3. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

Pages, 

Bill's School and Mine 1-2 1 

Play as a Training in Application. . 22-26 

The Energizing of Play 27-30 

The Study of Science 31-56 

The Discipline of Work 57-6o 

Part of an Education 61-87 

The Uses of Hardship 89-92 

The Public School 93-98 



VI 1 



BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE 



It seems that the Japanese have domesticated nature. 

Lafcadio Hearne. 



I always think of my school as my boyhood. 
Until I was big enough to swim the Missouri 
River my home was in a little Kansas town, and 
we boys lived in the woods and in the water all 
Summer, and in the woods and on the ice all 
Winter. We trapped and hunted, we rowed and 
fished, and built dams, and cut stick horses, and 
kept stick-horse livery stables where the grape- 
vines hung, and where the paw-paws mellowed 
in the Fall. We made mud slides into our 
swimming hole, and we were artists in mud- 
tattoo, painting face and body with thin black 
mud and scraping white stripes from head to 
foot. We climbed the trees and cut our names, 
we sucked the sap of the box elder and squashed 
poke berries for war paint. We picked wild 
grapes and gooseberries, and made pop-guns to 
shoot green haws. In the Autumn we gathered 
walnuts, and in the Spring we greeted the 
johnny-jump-ups, and the sweet williams as they 
peered through the mold. 

Always, we boys were out of doors, as it seems 
to me; and I did the chores. It is something to 
learn the toughness of hickory under the saw, 
how easily walnut splits, how mean elm is to 

3 



4 bill's school and mine. 

handle; and a certain dexterity comes to a boy 
who teaches a calf to drink, or slops hogs without 
soiling his Sunday clothes in the evening. And 
the hay makes acrobats. In the loft a boy learns 
to turn flip-flops, and with a lariat rope he can 
make a trapeze. My rings were made by pad- 
ding the iron rings from the hubs of a lumber 
wagon and swinging them from the rafters. 

Bill, little Bethlehem Bill, has a better school 
than I had ; the house and the things that go with 
it. Bill's teachers know more accurately what 
they are about than did my teachers in the old 
days out West half a century ago. And, of 
course. Bill is getting things from his school that 
I did not get. But he is growing up with a woe- 
fully distorted idea of life. What does Bill 
know about the woods and the flowers? Where 
in Bill's makeup is that which comes from 
browsing on berries and nuts and the rank paw 
paw, and roaming the woods like the Bander- 
log? And the crops, what does he know about 
them? 

The silver-sides used to live in the pool under 
the limestone ledges by the old stone quarry 
where the snakes would sun themselves at noon. 
The wild rose, with its cinnamon-scented flower 
and curling leaves, used to bloom in May for 



bill's school and mine. 5 

me — for me and a little brown-eyed girl who 
found her ink-bottle filled with them when the 
school bell called us in from play. And on 
Saturdays we boys roamed over the prairies 
picking wild flowers, playing wild plays and 
dreaming wild dreams — children's dreams. Do 
you suppose that little Bill dreams such dreams 
in a fifty-foot lot with only his mother's flowers 
in the window pots to teach him the great 
mystery of life? 

Bill has no barn. I doubt if he can skin a cat, 
and I am sure he cannot do the big drop from 
the trapeze. To turn a flip-flop would fill him 
with alarm, and yet Jim Betts, out in Kansas, 
used to turn a double flip-flop over a stack of 
barrels! And Jim Betts is a man to look at. 
He is built by the day. He has an educated 
body, and it is going into its fifties with health 
and strength that Bill will have to work for. 
And Jim Betts and I used to make our own kites 
and nigger-shooters and sleds and rabbit traps. 

Bill's school seems real enough, but his play 
and his work seem rather empty. Of course Bill 
cannot have the fringe of a million square miles 
of wild buffalo range for his out-of-doors. No, 
Bill cannot have that. Never, again. And to 
imagine that Bill needs anything of the kind is to 



6 bill's school and mine. 

forget the magic of Bill's ''make-believe!" A 
tree, a brook, a stretch of grass! What old- 
world things Bill's fancy can create there! 
What untold history repeat itself in Bill's most 
fragmentary play! Bill, is by nature, a con- 
juror. Give him but little and he v^ill make a 
world for himself, and grow to be a man. Older 
people seem, however, to forget, and deprive 
Bill of the little that he needs; and it is worth 
while, therefore, to develop the contrast between 
Bill's school and that school of mine in the long- 
ago land of my boyhood out-of-doors. 

The Land of Out-of-Doors! What irony 
there is in such glowing phrase to city boys like 
Bill ! The supreme delight of my own boyhood 
days was to gather wild flowers in a wooded 
hollow, to reach which led across a sunny stretch 
of wild meadow rising to the sky; and I would 
have you know that I lived as a boy in a land 
where a weed never grew.* I wish that Bill 

* The western prairies, except in the very center of the Mississippi 
Valley, are beautifully rolling, and they meet every stream with 
deeply carved bluffs. In the early days every stream was fringed 
with woods ; and prairie and woodland, alike, knew nothing beyond 
the evenly balanced contest of indigenous life. There came, how- 
ever, a succession of strange epidemics, as one after another of our 
noxious weeds gained foothold in that fertile land. I remember 
well several years when dog-fennel grew in every nook and corner 
of my home town in Kansas; then, after a few years, a variety of 



bill's school and mine. 7 

might have access to the places where the wild 
flowers grow, and above all I wish that Bill 
might have more opportunity to see his father at 
work. A hundred years ago these things were 
within the reach of every boy and girl ; but now, 
alas, Bill sees no other manual labor than the 
digging of a ditch in a cluttered street, or stunted 
in growth, he has almost become a part of the 
machine he daily tends, and Boyville has become 
a paved and guttered city, high-walled, desolate, 
and dirty; with here and there a vacant lot 
hideous with refuse in early Spring and over- 
whelmed with an increasing pestilence of weeds 
as the Summer days go by! And the strangest 
thing about it all is, that Bill accepts unquestion- 
ingly, and even with manifestations of joy, just 
any sort of a world, if only it is flooded with 
sunshine. 

I remember how, in my boyhood, the rare ad- 
vent of an old tin can in my favorite swimming 
hole used to offend me, while such a thing as a 
cast-off shoe was simply intolerable, and I won- 

thistle grew to the exclusion of every other uncultivated thing; and 
then followed a curious epidemic of tumble-weed, a low spreading 
annual which broke off at the ground in the Fall and was rolled 
across the open country in countless millions by the Autumn winds. 
I remember well my first lone " beggar louse," and how pretty I 
thought it was! And my first dandelion, and of that I have never 
changed my opinion! 



8 bill's school and mine. 

der that Bill's unquenchable delight in out-door 
life does not become an absolute rage in his 
indifference to the dreadful pollution of the 
streams and the universal pestilence of weeds 
and refuse in our thickly populated districts. 

I cannot refrain from quoting an amusing 
poem of James Whitcomb Riley's, which ex- 
presses (more completely than anything I know) 
the delight of boys in out-door life, where so 
many things happen and so many things lure; 
and you can easily catch in the swing of Riley's 
verse that wanton note which is ordinarily so 
fascinatingly boyish, but which may too easily 
turn to a raging indifference to everything that 
makes for purity in this troubled life of ours. 

Three Jolly Hunters. 

O there were three jolly youngsters; 

And a-hunting they did go, 
With a setter-dog and a pointer-dog 

And a yaller-dog also. 
Looky there! 

And they hunted and they hal-looed; 

And the first thing they did find 
Was a dingling-dangling hornets' nest 

A-swinging in the wind. 
Looky there! 



bill's school and mine. 9 

And the first one said, " What is it? " 

Said the next, " Let's punch and see," 
And the third one said, a mile from there, 

"I wish we'd let it be!" 
Looky there! (Showing the back of his neck.) 

And they hunted and they hal-looed ; 

And the next thing they did raise 
Was a bobbin bunnie cotton-tail 

That vanished from their gaze. 
Looky there! 

One said it was a hot baseball, 

Zippt thru the brambly thatch, 
But the others said 'twas a note by post 

Or a telergraph dispatch. 
Looky there! 

So they hunted and they hal-looed; 

And the next thing they did sight, 
Was a great big bull-dog chasing them, 

And a farmer hollering " Skite ! " 
Looky there! 

And the first one said " Hi-jinktum! '* 

And the next, " Hi-jinktum-jee! " 
And the last one said, " Them very words 

Has just occurred to me ! " 
Looky there! (Showing the tattered seat of his pants.) 

This is the hunting song of the American Ban- 



lo bill's school and mine. 

der-log,* and this kind of hunting is better than 
the kind that needs a gun. To one who falls 

* Road-Song of the Bander-Log. 

(From Kipling's Jungle-Book.) 

Here we go in a flung festoon, 
Half way up to the jealous moon! 
Don't you envy our pranceful bands? 
Don't you wish your feet were hands? 
Wouldn't you like if your tails were — so — 
Curved in the shape of a cupid's bow? 
Now you're angry, but — never mind — 
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind! 

Here we sit in a branchy row, 
Thinking of beautiful things we know; 
Dreaming of deeds we mean to do, 
All complete in a minute or two — 
Something noble and grand and good, 
Done by merely wishing we could. 
Now we're going to — never mind — 
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind! 

All the talk we ever have heard 
Uttered by bat, or beast, or bird — 
Hide or scale or skin or feather — 
Jabber it quickly and altogether! 
Excellent! Wonderful! Once again! 
Now we are talking just like men. 
Let's pretend we are — never mind — 
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind ! 
This is the way of the Monkey-kind. 

Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines, 
That rocket by where light and high the wild grape swings. 

By the rubbish in our wake, by the noble noise we make. 
Be sure, be sure, we're going to do some splendid things. 



bill's school and mine. II 

into the habit of it, the gun is indeed a useless 
tool. I am reminded of a day I spent with a 
gun at a remote place in the Rocky Mountains, 
where, during the 25 days I have camped there 
on four different trips, I have seen as many as 
150 of the wildest of North American animals, 
the Rocky Mountain sheep. I lay in ambush 
for three hours waiting for sheep, and the sheep 
came; but they were out of range again before I 
saw them because I had become so interested in 
killing mosquitoes! I timed myself at intervals, 
and 80 per minute for three solid hours makes 
an honest estimate of 14,400. And I was 
hungry, too. I fancy the sheep were not fright- 
ened but wished the good work to go on un- 
disturbed. 

Do you, perhaps, like candy? Did you ever 
consider that the only sweetmeat our forefathers 
had for thousands of years was wild honey? 
And those sour times — if I may call them such 
— before the days of sugar and candy, come 
much nearer to us than you realize, for I can 
remember my own grandfather's tales of bee- 
hunting in Tennessee. Just imagine how excit- 
ing it must have been in the days of long-ago to 
find a tree loaded with — candy! A bee tree! 
If Bill were to go back with me to the wild 



12 bill's school and mine. 

woods of Tennessee, some thrill of that old 
excitement would well up from the depths of his 
soul at finding such a tree. You may wonder 
what I am driving at, so I will tell you, that one 
of the most exciting experiences of my boyhood 
was a battle with a colony of bumble bees. I 
was led into it by an older companion and the 
ardor and excitement of that battle, as I even now 
remember it, are wholly inexplicable to me ex- 
cept I think of it as a representation through 
inherited instinct of a ten-thousand-years' search 
for wild honey. 

My schooling grew out of instinctive reactions 
toward natural things ; hunting and fishing, dig- 
ging and planting in the Spring, nutting in the 
Fall, and the thousands of variations which these 
things involve, and I believe that the play of in- 
stinct is the only solid basis of growth of a boy or 
girl. I believe, furthermore, that the very 
essence of boy humor is bound up with the amaz- 
ing incongruity of his instincts. Was there ever 
a boy whose instincts (many of them mere fatuity 
like his digestive appendix) have not led him 
time and again into just thin air, to say nothing 
of water and mud! For my part I have never 
known anything more supremely funny than 
learning what a hopeless mess of wood pulp and 



bill's school and mine. 13 

worms a bumble-bee's nest really is, except, per- 
haps, seeing another boy learn the same stinging 
lesson. 

The use of formulas, too, is unquestionably in- 
stinctive, and we all know how apt a boy is to 
indulge in formulas of the hocus-pocus sort, like 
Tom Sawyer's recipe for removing warts by the 
combined charm of black midnight and a black 
cat, dead. And a boy arrives only late in his 
boyhood, if ever, to some sense of the distinction 
between formulas of this kind and such as are 
vital and rational. I think that there is much 
instruction and a great deal of humor connected 
with the play of this instinctive tendency. I re- 
member a great big boy, a hired man on my 
grandfather's farm, in fact, who was led into a 
fight with a nest of hornets with the expectation 
that he would bear a charmed skin if he shouted 
in loud repetition the words, "Jew's-harp, jew's- 
harp." 

Talk about catching birds by putting salt on 
their tails! Once, as I rowed around a bend on 
a small stream, I saw a sand-hill crane stalking 
along the shore. Into the water I went with the 
suddenly conceived idea that I could catch that 
crane, and, swimming low, I reached the shore, 
about 20 feet from the bird, jumped quickly out 



H bill's school and mine. 

of the water, made a sudden dash and the bird 
was captured ! Once I saw a catfish, gasping for 
air at the surface of water that had been muddied 
by the opening of a sluice-way in a dam. Swim- 
ming up behind the fish, I jambed a hand into 
each gill, and, helped by the fish's tail, I pushed 
it ashore; and it weighed 36 pounds! A friend 
of mine, by the name of Stebbins, once followed 
his dog in a chase after a jack rabbit. The 
rabbit made a wide circle and came back to its 
own trail some distance ahead of the dog, then it 
made a big sidewise jump, and sat looking at the 
dog as it passed by; so intently indeed that 
Stebbins walked up behind the rabbit and took 
it up with his hands. 

I think you will agree with me that my out- 
door school was a wonderful thing. The Land 
of Out-of-Doors! To young people the best 
school and play-house, and to older people an 
endless asylum of delight. 

" The grass so little has to do, 
A sphere of simple green 
With only butterflies to brood 
And bees to entertain. 

" And stir all day to pretty tunes 
The breezes fetch along, 
And hold the sunshine in its lap 
And bow — to everything. 



bill's school and mine. 15 

" And thread the dew all night, like pearls, 
And make itself so fine, 
A duchess were too common 
For such a noticing. 

" And even when it dies, to pass 
In odors so divine 
As lowly spices gone to sleep. 
Or amulets of pine. 

" And then to dwell in sovereign barns 
And dream the days away. 
The grass so little has to do — 
I wish I were the hay." 



The most important thing, I should say, for 
the success of Bill's fine school is that ample op- 
portunity be given to Bill for every variety of 
play including swimming and skating, and 
wherever possible, boating. It is ridiculous to 
attempt to teach Bill anything without the sub- 
stantial results of play to build upon. Play- 
grounds are the cheapest and, in many respects, 
the best of schools, but they are almost entirely 
lacking in many of our towns which have grown 
to cities in a generation in this great nation of 
villagers. The Boroughs of the Bethlehems, 
for example, have no playground connected with 



1 6 bill's school and mine. 

a Public School, nor any other public place 
where boys can play ball. 

WHAT DO YOU THINK? 

(This and the following communication are from a small 
paper, printed and published by two Bethlehem boys.) 

We, the editors, have been dragged along back alleys, 
across open sewers, and through rank growths of weed and 
thistle to view the Monocacy meadows to consider the 
possibility of their use as a playground or park. We are not 
much impressed with the proposal, the place is apparently 
hopeless, but the park enthusiast could not be touched by 
argument. To our very practical objection that the cost 
would be excessive, he made the foolish reply that there is no 
cost but a saving in using what has hitherto been wasted. 
To our expressed disgust for the open sewers and filth he 
replied that that was beside the question, for, as he said, we 
must sooner or later take care of the filth anyway. But, we 
said, the creek is contaminated above the town. Very well, 
he replied, we have the right the prohibit such contamination. 
But worst of all, in double meaning, was his instant agree- 
ment to our statement that we had our cemeteries which, 
he said, were really better than any Bethlehem park could be. 

COMMUNICATION. 

Dear Editors: I took a walk along the Monocacy Creek 
on Sunday afternoon and discovered clear water several miles 
above town and a fine skating pond ; but I suppose that you 
and all of your subscribers will have to go to our enterprising 
neighbor, Allentown, to find any well-kept ice to skate on 



bill's school and mine. 17 

this Winter. Most people think that you boys can swim in 
Nature's own water, skate on Nature's own ice, and roam in 
Nature's own woods, but it is absolutely certain that your 
elders must take some care and pains if you town boys are 
to do any of these things. And yet, here in the East, chil- 
dren are said to be brought up (implying care and pains) 
and hogs are said to be raised (implying only feeding). I 
thank the Lord that I was " raised " in the West where 
there are no such false distinctions. 

Your subscriber, S. 
P. S. — As I came home covered with beggar-lice and 
cockle-burrs I saw a ring of fire on South Mountain, an 
annual occurrence which has been delayed a whole week this 
Autumn by a flourish of posters in several languages offering 
One Hundred Dollars Reward! S. 

In these days of steam and electricity we boast 
of having conquered nature. Well, we have got 
to domesticate nature before much else can be ac- 
complished in this country of ours. We have 
got to take care of our brooks and our rivers, of 
our open lands and our wooded hills. We have 
got to do it, and Bill would be better off if we 
took half of the cost of his fine school to meet the 
expense of doing it. When I was a boy I be- 
longed to the Bander-log, but Bill belongs to 
another tribe, the Rats, and there is nothing I 
would like so much to do as to turn Pied Piper 
and lure the entire brood of Bethlehem boys and 



1 8 bill's school and mine. 

girls to Friedensville* and into that awful chasm 
of crystal water to come back no more, no, not 
even when an awakened civic consciousness had 
made a park of the beautiful Monocacy mead- 
ows and converted the creek into a chain, a regu- 
lar Diamond Necklace of swimming holes. I 
beg the garbage men's (not a printer's error for 
man's) pardon for speaking of the beautiful 
Monocacy meadows. I refer to what has been 
and to what might easily continue to be. As for 
the Diamond Necklace, that, of course, would 
have to be above our gas works where the small 
stream of pure tar now joins the main stream. 

I know a small river in Kansas which is bor- 
dered by rich bottom lands from one-half to one 
mile in width between beautifully scalloped 
bluffs — where the upland prairie ends. In early 
days thick covering of grass was everywhere, 
and the clear stream, teeming with life, wound 
its way along a deep channel among scattered 
clusters of large walnut trees and dense groves 
of elm and cotton wood, rippling here and there 
over beds of rock. Now, however, every foot 
of ground, high and low, is mellowed by the 
plow, and the last time I saw the once beautiful 
valley of Wolf River it was as if the whole earth 

* The site of an abandoned zinc mine, where a few of the Bethle- 
hem boys go to swim. 



bill's school and mine. 19 

had melted with the rains of June, such devasta- 
tion of mud was there! Surely it requires more 
than the plow to domesticate nature; indeed, 
since I have lived between the coal-bearing AUe- 
ghenies and the sea, I have come to believe that 
it may require more than the plow and the 
crowded iron furnace, such pestilence of refuse 
and filth is here! 

I suppose that I am as familiar with the re- 
quirements of modern industry as any man liv- 
ing, and as ready to tolerate everything that is 
economically wise, but every day as I walk to 
and fro I see our Monocacy Creek covered with 
a scum of tar, and in crossing the river bridge I 
see a half mile long heap of rotting refuse serv- 
ing the Lehigh as a bank on the southern side; 
not all furnace refuse either by any means, but 
nameless stinking stuff cast off by an indifferent 
population and carelessly left in its very midst in 
one long unprecedented panorama of putrescent 
ugliness! And when, on splendid Autumn 
days, the nearby slopes of old South Mountain 
lift the eyes into pure oblivion of these distress- 
ing things, I see again and again a line of fire 
sweeping through the scanty woods. This I 
have seen every Autumn since first I came to 
Bethlehem. 

It is easy to speak in amusing hyperbole of 



20 bill's school and mine. 

garbage heaps and of brooks befouled with tar, 
but to have seen one useless flourish of posters on 
South Mountain in fifteen years! That is be- 
yond any possible touch of humor. It is indeed 
unfortunate that our river is not fit for boys to 
swim in, and it is not, for I have tried it, and I 
am not fastidious either, having lived an amphib- 
ious boyhood on the banks of the muddiest 
river in the world; but it is a positive disgrace 
that our river is not fit to look at, that it is good 
for nothing whatever but to drink; much too 
good, one would think, for people who protect 
the only stretch of woodland that is accessible to 
their boys and girls by a mere flourish of posters! 
I was born in Kansas when its inhabitants 
were largely Indians, and when its greatest re- 
source was wild buffalo skins ; and whatever ob- 
jection you may have to this description of my 
present home-place between the coal-bearing 
Alleghenies and the sea, please do not imagine 
that I have a sophisticated sentimentality 
towards the Beauties of Nature! No, I am still 
enough of an Indian to think chiefly of my belly 
when I look at a stretch of country. In the West 
I like the suggestion of hog-and-hominy which 
spreads for miles and miles beneath the sky, and 
here in the East I like the promise of pillars of 
fire and smoke and I like the song of steam! 



bill's school and mine. 21 

Bill's School and Mine! It may seem that I 
have said a great deal about my school, and very 
little about Bill's. But what is Bill's school? 
Surely, Bill's fine school-house and splendid 
teachers, and Bill's good mother are not all there 
is to Bill's school. No, Bill's school is as big as 
all Bethlehem, and in its bigger aspects it is a 
bad school, bad because Bill has no opportunity 
to play as a boy should play, and bad because 
Bill has no opportunity to work as a boy should 
work. 

" r b'en a-kindo musin', as the feller says, and I'm 
About o' the conclusion that they ain't no better time, 
When you come to cypher on it, than the times we used 

to know, 
When we swore our first ' dog-gone-It * sorto solem'-like 

and low. 

" You git my idy, do you? — little tads, you understand — 
Jes' a wishin', thue and thue you, that you on'y was a man. 
Yet here I am this minute, even forty, to a day. 
And fergittin' all that's in it, wishin' jes the other way! " 

I wonder if our Bill will "wish the other 
way" when he is a man? Indeed, I wonder if 
he will ever BE a man. If we could only count 
on that. Bill's school would not be our problem. 



PLAY AS A TRAINING IN 
APPLICATION. 



Never yet was a boy who dreamed 

of ice-cream sundaes while 

playing ball. 



Every one knows that play means health and 
happiness to children, and nearly every one 
thinks of the playgrounds movement as based 
solely on ideals of health and ideals of happiness 
in a rather narrow sense; but the movement 
means much more than health and happiness as 
these terms are generally understood. Play is 
itself the most fundamental and perhaps the most 
important form of education. 

The Indian boy's play, which included prac- 
tice with the bow and arrow, foot racing, ball 
playing and horse-back riding, was perfectly 
adapted to the needs of his adult life, but how 
about base ball and prisoner's base for the boy 
who is to become a salesman or a mechanic, a 
physician or an engineer? Good fun and a good 
appetite certainly come from these games, and 
one may also place to their credit a tempered 
reasonableness and a high regard for what is fair 
and square ; but as a training in intense and eager 
application, nothing can take their place. 

Play as a training in application! that cer- 
tainly is a paradox; and yet everyone knows that 
play is the first thing in life to give rise to that 
peculiar overwhelming eagerness which alone 

25 



26 bill's school and mine. 

can bring every atom of one's strength into ac- 
tion. Ability to focus one's whole mind upon 
an undertaking and to apply one's whole body in 
concentrated effort is what our boys and girls are 
most in need of, and vigorous competitive play 
serves better than anything else, if, indeed there 
is anything else to create it. 

Intense and eager application! That means 
not only an escape from laziness and apathy, but 
eagerness is the only thing in the world that 
defies fatigue. A healthy boy can put forth an 
amazing amount of physical effort and be fresh 
at the end of a day of play. And a man whose 
habit of application is so highly developed that 
it assumes a quality of eagerness and never fails 
in absolute singleness of purpose, is there any 
limit to what such a man can do? 



THE ENERGIZING OF PLAY. 



Strenuous play leads to strenuous work. 



Scarcely more than a generation ago every 
American boy came under the spell of hunting 
and fishing, the most powerful incitement to 
laborious days and the most potent of all ano- 
dynes for bodily discomfort and hardship ; and 
the problem of educational play is to a great 
extent the problem of finding a substitute for the 
lure of the wild for the energizing of play. 

The lure of the wild! Alas it is but a poet's 
fancy in this tame world of ours ! A tame world 
indeed; but it is peopled by a perennial race of 
Wild Indians, our children. Fortunately, how- 
ever, they are not dependent upon completely 
truthful externals. They do not need a million 
square miles of wild buffalo country; no, they 
will chase an imaginary stag 'round a vacant lot 
all day, if only there is a mixture of earth and 
sky and greenery to set off their make believe — 
and eat mush and milk when the day is done! 

But even youngsters must hunt in packs. In- 
deed the gang-idea contains the ultimate solution 
of what would otherwise be an impossible prob- 
lem, namely, to find an efficient substitute for 
the lure of the wild for the energizing of play. 
And play must be energized; the kind of play 

2q 



30 bill's school and mine. 

that educates; the kind that approaches hunting 
or fishing or tribal warfare or the settling of a 
blood-feud in its all-absorbing, single-minded, 
strenuous activity. 

It is silly for contented towns-folk to say " let 
the children play," because city children do not 
play by merely being allowed to do so. They 
may indeed fight or steal, or sit by a fire in a 
back alley talking sex like grown-up sordidly- 
imaginative .Hottentots in Darkest Africa; but 
the make-believe of natural play demands flow- 
ing brooks and woodland-hills — or a little sug- 
gestive example and organization with facilities 
for the kind of play that means individual and 
gang competition. 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 



Grau theurer Freund ist alle Theorie 
Und griin des Lebens goldener Baum. 

Goethe. 



Everyone realizes the constraint that is placed 
upon the lives of men by the physical necessities 
of the world in which we live, and although in 
one way this constraint is more and more re- 
lieved with the progress of the applied sciences, 
in another way it becomes more and more exact- 
ing. It is indeed easier to cross the Atlantic 
Ocean now than it was in Leif Ericsson's time, 
but consider the discipline of the shop, and 
above all consider the rules of machine design! 
Could even the hardy Norsemen have known 
anything as uncompromisingly exacting as these? 
To do things becomes easier and easier, but to 
learn how to do things becomes more and more 
difficult. 

Every person I have ever talked with, old 
or young, theorist or practician, student-in- 
general or specialist in whatever line, has ex- 
hibited more or less distinctly a certain attitude 
of impatience towards the exactions of this or 
that phase of the precise modes of thought of 
the physical sciences. 

" Da wird der Geist Euch wohl dressiert 
In spanische Stiefeln eingeschnuert." 

33 



34 bill's school and mine. 

In a recent article* on the distinction between 
the liberal and technical in education, my friend 
and colleague, Professor Percy Hughes, says 
that in speaking of an education as liberal we 
thereby associate it with liberalism in politics, in 
philosophy and theology, and in men's personal 
relations with each other. In each case liberal- 
ism seems fundamentally, to denote freedom, and 
liberalism in education is the freedom of de- 
velopment in each individual of that character 
and personality which is his true nature. All 
this I accept in the spirit of an optimist, assuming 
men's true natures to be good, but I do not, and 
I am sure that Professor Hughes does not, con- 
sider that technical education, unless it be inex- 
cusably harsh and narrow, is illiberal; nor that 
liberal education, unless it be inexcusably soft 
and vague, is wholly non-technical. The liberal 
and the technical are not two kinds of education, 
each complete in itself. Indeed, Professor 
Hughes speaks of liberal education, not as a 
category, but as a condition which makes for 
freedom of development of personality and 
character. 

It seems to me, however, that there are phases 
of education which have but little to do with 

* Popular Science Monthly, October, 1910. 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 35 

personality, and I call to your attention this 
definition of liberalism in education, in order 
that I may turn sharply away from it as a partial 
definition which, to a great extent, excludes the 
physical sciences. Indeed, I wish to speak of a 
condition in education which is the antithesis of 
freedom. I wish to explain the teaching of ele- 
mentary physical science as a mode of constraint, 
as an impressed constructive discipline without 
which no freedom is possible in our dealings 
with physical things. I wish to characterize the 
study of elementary physical science as a reor- 
ganization of the workaday mind of a young man 
as complete as the pupation of an insect; and I 
wish to emphasize the necessity of exacting 
constraint as the essential condition of this re- 
organization. 

There is a kind of salamander, the axolotl, 
which lives a tad-pole like youth and never 
changes to the adult form unless a stress of dry 
weather annihilates his watery world; but he 
lives always and reproduces his kind as a tad- 
pole, and a very funny-looking tadpole he is, 
with his lungs hanging like feathery tassels from 
the sides of his head. When the aquatic home 
of the axolotl dries up, he quickly develops a 
pair of internal lungs, lops off his tassels and 



36 bill's school and mine. 

embarks on a new mode of life on land. So it 
is with our young men who are to develop be- 
yond the tadpole stage, they must meet with 
quick and responsive inward growth that new 
and increasing "stress of dryness," as many are 
wont to call our modern age of science and 
organized industry. 

Stress of dryness! Indeed no flow of humor 
is to be found in the detached impersonalities 
of the sciences, and if we are to understand the 
characteristics of physical science we must turn 
our attention to things which lead inevitably to 
an exacting and rigid mathematical philosophy. 
It certainly is presumptive to tell a reader that 
he must turn his attention to such a thing, but 
there is no other way; the best we can do is to 
choose the simplest path. Let us therefore con- 
sider the familiar phenomena of motion. 

The most prominent aspect of all phenomena 
is motion. In that realm of nature which is not 
of man's devising* motion is universal. In the 

* Science as young people study it has two chief aspects, or in 
other words, it may be roughly divided into two parts, namely, 
the study of the things which come upon us, as it were, and the 
study of the things ivhich ive deliberately demse. The things that 
come upon us include weather phenomena and every aspect and 
phase of the natural world, the things we cannot escape; and the 
things we devise relate chiefly to the serious work of the world, the 
things we laboriously build and the things we deliberately andi 
patiently seek. 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 37 

Other realm of nature, the realm of things 
devised, motion is no less prominent. Every 
purpose of our practical life is accomplished by 
movements of the body and by directed move- 
ments of tools and mechanisms, such as the swing 
of scythe and flail, and the studied movements of 
planer and lathe from which are evolved the 
strong-armed steam shovel and the deft-fingered 
loom. 

The laws of motion. Every one has a sense of 
the absurdity of the idea of reducing the more 
complicated phenomena of nature to an orderly 
system of mechanical law. To speak of motion 
is to call to mind first of all the phenomena that 
are associated with the excessively complicated, 
incessantly changing, turbulent and tumbling 
motion of wind and water. These phenomena 
have always had the most insistent appeal to us, 
they have confronted us everywhere and always^ 
and life is an unending contest with their for- 
tuitous diversity, which rises only too often to 
irresistible sweeps of destruction in fire and 
flood, and in irresistible crash of collision and 
collapse where all things mingle in one dread 
fluid confusion! The laws of motion! Con- 
sider the awful complexity of a disastrous tor- 
nado or the dreadful confusion of a railway 



38 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

wreck, and understand that what we call the laws 
of motion, although they have a great deal to do 
with the ways in which we think, have very little 
to do with the phenomena of nature. The laws 
of motion! There is indeed a touch of arro- 
gance in such a phrase with its unwarranted sug- 
gestion of completeness and universality, and yet 
the ideas which constitute the laws of motion 
have an almost unlimited extent of legitimate 
range, and these ideas must be possessed with a 
perfect precision if one is to acquire any solid 
knowledge whatever of the phenomena of motion. 
The necessity of precise ideas. Herein lies the 
impossibility of compromise and the necessity of 
coercion and constraint; one must think so and 
so, there is no other way. And yet there is 
always a conflict in the mind of even the most 
willing student because of the constraint which 
precise ideas place upon our vivid and primi- 
tively adequate sense of physical things ; and this 
conflict is perennial but it is by no means a one- 
sided conflict between mere crudity and refine- 
ment, for refinement ignores many things. In- 
deed, precise ideas not only help to form* our 
sense of the world in which we live but they 
inhibit sense as well, and their rigid and un- 

* See discussion of Bacon's New Engine on page 52. 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 39 

challenged rule would be indeed a stress of 
dryness. 

The laws of motion. We return again and 
yet again to the subject, for one is not to be de- 
terred therefrom by any concession of inade- 
quacy, no, nor by any degree of respect for the 
vivid youthful sense of those things which to suit 
our narrow purpose must be stripped completely 
bare. It is unfortunate, however, that the most 
familiar type of motion, the flowing of water or 
the blowing of the wind, is bewilderingly use- 
less as a basis for the establishment of the simple 
and precise ideas which are called the "laws of 
motion," and which are the most important of 
the fundamental principles of physics. These 
ideas have in fact grown out of the study of the 
simple phenomena which are associated with 
the motion of bodies in bulk without perceptible 
change of form, the motion of rigid bodies, so 
called. 

Before narrowing down the scope of the dis- 
cussion, however, let us illustrate a very general 
application of the simplest idea of motion, the 
idea of velocity. Every one has, no doubt, an 
idea of what is meant by the velocity of the wind ; 
and a sailor, having what he calls a ten-knot 
wind, knows that he can manage his boat with a 



40 bill's school and mine. 

certain spread of canvas and that he can accom- 
plish a certain portion of his voyage in a given 
time; but an experienced sailor, although he 
speaks glibly of a ten-knot wind, belies his speech 
by taking wise precaution against every conceiv- 
able emergency. He knows that a ten-knot 
wind is by no means a sure or a simple thing with 
its incessant blasts and whirls; and a sensitive 
anemometer, having more regard for minutiae 
than any sailor, usually registers in every wind a 
number of almost complete but excessively 
irregular stops and starts every minute and varia- 
tions of direction that sweep around half the 
horizon! 

Wer will was Lebendig's erkennen und beschreiben 
Sucht erst den Geist heraus zu trelben. 

Goethe. 

We must evidently direct our attention to 
something simpler than the wind. Let us, there- 
fore, consider the drawing of a wagon or the 
propulsion of a boat. It is a familiar experience 
that effort is required to start a body moving and 
that continued effort is required to maintain the 
motion. Certain very simple facts as to the 
nature and effects of this effort were discovered 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 41 

by Sir Isaac Newton, and on the basis of these 
facts Newton formulated the laws of motion. 

The effort required to start a body or to keep it mov- 
ing is called force. Thus, if one starts a box sliding 
along a table one is said to exert a force on the box. 
The same effect might be accomplished by interposing 
a stick between the hand and the box, in which case 
one would exert a force on the stick and the stick in its 
turn would exert a force on the box. We thus arrive 
at the notion of force action between inanimate bodies, 
between the stick and the box in this case, and Newton 
pointed out that the force action between the two 
bodies A and B always consists of two equal and 
opposite forces, that is to say, if body A exerts a force 
on B, then B exerts an equal and opposite force on A, 
or, to use Newton's words, action is equal to reaction 
and in a contrary direction. 

In leading up to this statement one might con- 
sider the force with which a person pushes on 
the box and the equal and opposite force with 
which the box pushes back on the person, but if 
one does not wish to introduce the stick as an 
intermediary, it is better to speak of the force 
with which the hand pushes on the box, and the 
equal and opposite force with which the box 
pushes back on the hand, because in discussing 
physical phenomena it is of the utmost im- 
portance to pay attention only to impersonal 



42 bill's school and mine. 

things. Indeed our modern industrial life, in 
bringing men face to face with an entirely un- 
precedented array of intricate mechanical and 
physical problems, demands of every one a great 
and increasing amount of impersonal thinking, 
and the precise and rigorous modes of thought 
of the physical sciences are being forced upon 
widening circles of men with a relentless insis- 
tence — all of which it was intended to imply by 
referring to the " stress of dryness " which over- 
takes the little axolotl in his contented existence 
as a tadpole. 

When we examine Into the conditions under which 
a body starts to move and the conditions under which 
a body once started is kept in motion, we come across 
a very remarkable fact, if we are careful to consider 
every force which acts upon the body, and this remark- 
able fact is that the forces which act upon a body at rest 
are related to each other in precisely the same way as 
the forces which act upon a body moving steadily along 
a straight path. Therefore it is convenient to consider, 
first the relation between the forces which act upon a 
body at rest, or upon a body in uniform motion, and 
second the relation between the forces which act upon 
a body which is starting or stopping or changing the 
direction of its motion. 

Suppose a person A were to hold a box in mid-air. 
To do so it would of course be necessary for him to push 
upwards on the box so as to balance the downward pull 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 43 

of the earth, the weight of the box as it is called. If 
another person B were to take hold of the box and pull 
upon it in any direction, A would have to exert an 
equal pull on the box in the opposite direction to keep 
it stationary. The forces which act upon a stationary 
body are always balanced. 

Every one, perhaps, realizes that what is here said 
about the balanced relation of the forces which act upon 
a stationary box, is equally true of the forces which act 
on a box similarly held in a steadily moving railway car 
or boat. Therefore, the forces which act upon a body 
which moves steadily along a straight path are balanced. 

This is evidently true when the moving body is sur- 
rounded on all sides by things which are moving along 
with it, as in a car or a boat; but how about a body 
which moves steadily along a straight path but which 
is surrounded by bodies which do not move along with 
it? Everyone knows that some active agent such as a 
horse or a steam engine must pull steadily upon such 
a body to keep it in motion. If left to itself such a 
moving body quickly comes to rest. Many have, no 
doubt, reached this further in/erence from experience, 
namely, that the tendency of moving bodies to come to 
rest is due to the dragging forces, or friction, with which 
surrounding bodies act upon a body in motion. Thus a 
moving boat is brought to rest by the drag of the water 
when the propelling force ceases to act; a train of cars 
is brought to rest because of the drag due to friction 
when the pull of the locomotive ceases; a box which is 
moving across a table comes to rest when left to itself, 
because of the drag due to friction between the box and 
the table. 



44 bill's school and mine. 

We must, therefore, always consider two distinct 
forces when we are concerned with a body which is 
kept in motion, namely, the propelling force due to 
some active agent such as a horse or an engine, and the 
dragging force due to surrounding bodies. Newton 
pointed out that when a body is moving steadily along 
a straight path, the propelling force is always equal and 
opposite to the dragging force. Therefore, The forces 
which act upon a body which is stationary, or which is 
moving uniformly along a straight path, are balanced 
forces. 

Many hesitate to accept as a fact the complete and 
exact balance of propelling and dragging forces on a 
body which is moving steadily along a straight path in 
the open, but direct experiment shows it to be true, and 
the most elaborate calculations and inferences based 
upon this idea of the complete balance of propelling and 
dragging forces on a body in uniform motion are verified 
by experiment. One may ask, why a canal boat, for 
example, should continue to move if the pull of the 
mule does not exceed the drag of the water; but why 
should it stop if the drag does not exceed the pull? 
Understand that we are not considering the starting of 
the boat. The fact is that the conscious effort which 
one must exert to drive a mule, the cost of the mule, 
and the expense of his keep, are what most people 
think of, however hard one tries to direct their atten- 
tion solely to the state of tension in the rope that hitches 
the mule to the boat after the boat is in full motion; 
and most people consider that if the function of the 
mule is simply to balance the drag of the water so as 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 45 

to keep the boat from stopping, then why should there 
not be some way to avoid the cost of so Insignificant an 
operation? There Is, Indeed, an extremely Important 
matter Involved here, but It has no bearing on the 
question as to the balance of propulsion and drag on a 
body which moves steadily along a straight path. 

Let us now consider the relation between the forces 
which act upon a body which is changing Its speed, upon 
a body which Is being started or stopped, for example. 
Everyone has noticed how a mule strains at his rope 
when starting a canal boat, especially If the boat Is 
heavily loaded, and how the boat continues to move for 
a long time after the mule ceases to pull. In the first 
case, the pull of the mule greatly exceeds the drag of 
the water, and the speed of the boat Increases; in the 
second case, the drag of the water of course exceeds the 
pull of the mule, for the mule Is not pulling at all, and 
the speed of the boat decreases. When the speed of a 
body Is changing, the forces which act on the body are 
unbalanced. We may conclude therefore that the 
effect of an unbalanced force acting on a body is to 
change the velocity of the body, and it Is evident that 
the longer the unbalanced force continues to act the 
greater the change of velocity. Thus if the mule 
ceases to pull on a canal boat for one second the 
velocity of the boat will be but slightly reduced by the 
unbalanced drag of the water, whereas if the mule ceases 
to pull for two seconds the decrease of velocity will be 
much greater. In fact the change of velocity due to a 
given unbalanced force is proportional to the time that 
the force continues to act. This Is exemplified by a 



46 bill's school and mine. 

body falling under the action of the unbalanced pull of 
the earth; after one second it will have gained a certain 
amount of velocity (about 32 feet per second), after 
two seconds it will have made a total gain of twice as 
much velocity (about 64 feet per second), and so on. 

Since the velocity produced by an unbalanced force is 
proportional to the time that the force continues to act, 
it is evident that the effect of the force should be 
specified as so-much-velocity-produced-per-second, ex- 
actly as in the case of earning money, the amount one 
earns is proportional to the length of time that one 
continues to work, and we always specify one's earning 
capacity as so-much-money-earned-per-day. 

Everyone knows what it means to give an easy pull 
or a hard pull on a body. That is to say, we all have 
the ideas of greater and less as applied to forces. 
Everybody knows also that if a mule pulls hard on a 
canal boat, the boat will get under way more quickly 
than if the pull is easy, that is, the boat will gain more 
velocity per unit of time under the action of a hard 
pull than under the action of an easy pull. There- 
fore, any precise statement of the effect of an unbal- 
anced force on a given body must correlate the precise 
value of the force and the exact amount of velocity pro- 
duced per unit of time by the force. This seems a very 
difficult thing, but its apparent difficulty is very largely 
due to the fact that we have not as yet agreed as td 
what we are to understand by the statement that one 
force is precisely three, or four, or any number of times 
as great as another. Suppose, therefore, that we agree 
to call one force twice as large as another when it will 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 47 

produce in a given body twice as much velocity in a 
given time (remembering of course that we are now 
talking about unbalanced forces, or that we are assum- 
ing for the sake of simplicity of statement, that no 
dragging forces exist). As a result of this definition 
we may state that the amount of velocity produced per 
second in a given body by an unbalanced force is pro- 
portional to the force* 

Of course we know no more about the matter 
in hand than we did before we adopted the 
definition, but we do have a good illustration of 
how important a part is played in the study of 
physical science, by what we may call making up 
one's mind, in the sense of putting one's mind in 
order. This kind of thing is very prominent in 
the study of elementary physics, and the rather 
indefinite reference (in the story of the little 
tasseled tadpole) to an inward growth as needful 
before one can hope for any measure of success 
in our modern world of scientific industry was 
an allusion to this thing, the "making-up" of 
one's mind. Nothing is so essential in the ac- 
quirement of exact and solid knowledge as the 
possession of precise ideas, not indeed that a 
perfect precision is necessary as a means for re- 
taining knowledge, but that nothing else so 



48 bill's school and mine. 

ejfectually opens the mind for the perception 
even of the simplest evidences of a subject.^ 

We have now settled the question as to the effect of 
different unbalanced forces on a given body on the basis 
of very general experience, and by an agreement as to 
the precise meaning to be attached to the statement 
that one force Is so many times as great as another; but 
how about the effect of the same force upon different 
bodies, and how may we identify the force so as to be 
sure that it is the same? It is required, for example, to 
exert a given force on body A and then exert the same 
force on another body B. This can be done by causing 
a third body C (a coiled spring, for example) to exert 
the force; then the forces exerted on A and B are the 
same if the reaction In each case produces the same effect 
on body C (the same degree of stretch, for example). 
Concerning the effects of the same unbalanced force on 
different bodies three things have to be settled by ex- 
periment as follows: 

(a) In the first place let us suppose that a certain 
force F is twice as large as a certain other force G, ac- 
cording to our agreement, because the force F produces 
twice as much velocity every second as force G when 
the one and then the other of these forces is caused to 
act upon a given body, a piece of lead for example. 
Then, does the force F produce twice as much velocity 

* Opens the mind, that is, for those things which are conformable 
to or consistent with the ideas. The history of science presents many 
cases where accepted ideas have closed the mind to contrary evi- 
dences for many generations. Let young men beware! 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 49 

every second as the force G whatever the nature and 
size of the given body, whether It be wood, or ice, or 
sugar? Experiment shows that It does. 

(b) In the second place, suppose that we have such 
amounts of lead, or Iron, or wood, etc., that a certain 
given force produces the same amount of velocity per 
second when It Is made to act, as an unbalanced force, 
upon one or another of these various bodies. Then 
what Is the relation between the amounts of these vari- 
ous substances? Experiment shows that they all have 
the same mass In grams, or pounds, as determined by a 
balance. That Is, a given force produces the same 
amount of velocity per second In a given number of 
grams of any kind of substance. Thus the earth pulls 
with a certain definite force (In a given locality) upon 
M grams of any substance and, aside from the dragging 
forces due to air friction, all kinds of bodies gain the 
same amount of velocity per second when they fall 
under action of the unbalanced pull of the earth. 

(c) In the third place, what Is the relation between 
the velocity per second produced by a given force and 
the mass In grams (or pounds) of the body upon which 
It acts. Experiment shows that the velocity per second 
produced by a given force is inversely proportional to the 
mass of the body upon which the force acts. In speak- 
ing of the mass of the body In grams (or pounds) we 
here refer to the result which is obtained by weighing 
the body on a balance scale, and the experimental fact 
which is here referred to constitutes a very important 
discovery: namely, when one body has twice the mass 
of another, according to the balance method of measur- 



50 bill's school and mine. 

ing mass, it is accelerated half as fast by a given un- 
balanced force. 

The effect of an unbalanced force in producing 
velocity may therefore be summed up as follows: The 
velocity per second produced by an unbalanced force is 
proportional to the force and inversely proportional to 
the mass of the body upon which the force acts, and the 
velocity produced by an unbalanced force is always in 
the direction of the force. 



"We advise all men," says Bacon, "to think 
of the true ends of knowledge, and that they en- 
deavor not after it for curiosity, contention, or 
the sake of despising others, nor yet for reputa- 
tion or power or any other such inferior con- 
sideration, but solely for the occasions and uses 
of life." It is difficult to imagine any other 
basis upon which the study of physics can be 
justified than for the occasions and uses of life; 
in a certain broad sense, indeed, there is no other 
justification. But the great majority of men 
must needs be practical in the narrow sense, and 
physics, as the great majority of men study it, 
relates chiefly to the conditions which have been 
elaborated through the devices of industry as 
exemplified in our mills and factories, in our 
machinery of transportation, in optical and 
musical instruments, in the means for the supply 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 5 1 

of power, heat, light, and water for general and 
domestic use, and so on. 

From this narrow practical point of view it 
may seem that there can be nothing very exacting 
in the study of the physical sciences; but what 
is physics? That is the question. One defini- 
tion at least is to be repudiated; it is not "The 
science of masses, molecules and the ether." 
Bodies have mass and railways have length, and 
to speak of physics as the science of masses is as 
silly as to define railroading as the practice of 
lengths, and nothing as reasonable as this can be 
said in favor of the conception of physics as the 
science of molecules and the ether; it is the 
sickliest possible notion of physics, whereas the 
healthiest notion, even if a student does not 
wholly grasp it, is that physics is the science of 
the ways of taking hold of things and pushing 
them! 

Bacon long ago listed in his quaint way the 
things which seemed to him most needful for the 
advancement of learning. Among other things 
he mentioned " A New Engine or a Help to the 
mind corresponding to Tools for the hand," and 
the most remarkable aspect of present-day 
physical science is that aspect in which it con- 
stitutes a realization of this New Engine of 



52 bill's school and mine. 

Bacon. We continually force upon the ex- 
tremely meager data obtained directly through 
our senses, an interpretation which, in its com- 
plexity and penetration, would seem to be en- 
tirely incommensurate with the data themselves, 
and we exercise over physical things a kind of 
rational control which greatly transcends the 
native cunning of the hand. The possibility of 
this forced interpretation and of this rational 
control depends upon the use of two complexes: 
(a) A logical structure, that is to say, a body of 
mathematical and conceptual theory which is 
brought to bear upon the immediate materials of 
sense, and (b) a mechanical structure, that is to 
say, either (i) a carefully planned arrangement 
of apparatus, such as is always necessary in mak- 
ing physical measurements, or (2) a carefully 
planned order of operations, such as the suc- 
cessive operations of solution, reaction, precipi- 
tation, filtration, and weighing in chemistry. 

These two complexes do indeed constitute a 
New Engine which helps the mind as tools help 
the hand; it is through the enrichment of the 
materials of sense by the operation of this New 
Engine that the elaborate interpretations of the 
physical sciences are made possible, and the 
study of elementary physics is intended to lead 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 53 

to the realization of this New Engine: (a) By 
the building up in the mind, of the logical struc- 
ture of the physical sciences; (b) by training in 
the making of measurements and in the perform- 
ance of ordered operations, and (c) by exercises 
in the application of these things to the actual 
phenomena of physics and chemistry at every 
step and all of the time with every possible 
variation. 

That, surely, is a sufficiently exacting pro- 
gram; and the only alternative is to place the 
student under the instruction of Jules Verne 
where he need not trouble himself about founda- 
tions but may follow his teacher pleasantly on a 
care-free trip to the moon or with easy improvi- 
dence embark on a voyage of twenty-thousand 
leagues under the sea. 

What it means to study physical science may 
be explained further by mentioning the chief 
difficulties encountered in the teaching of that 
subject. One difficulty is that the native sense 
of most men is woefully inadequate without 
stimulation and direction for supplying the sense 
material upon which the logical structure of the 
science is intended to operate. A second diffi- 
culty is that the human mind is so in the habit of 
considering the practical affairs of life that it 



54 bill's school and mine. 

can hardly be turned to that minute considera- 
tion of apparently insignificant details which is 
so necessary in the scientific analysis even of the 
most practical things. Everyone knows the 
capacity of the Indian for long continued and 
serious effort in his primitive mode of life, and 
yet it is difficult to persuade an Indian " farmer" 
to plow. Everyone knows also that the typical 
college student is not stupid, and yet it is difficult 
to persuade the young men of practical and busi- 
ness ideals in our colleges and technical schools 
to study the abstract elements of science. In- 
deed it is as difficult to get the average young 
man to hold abstract things in mind as to get a 
young Indian to plow, and for almost exactly the 
same reason. The scientific details of any prob- 
lem are in themselves devoid of human value, 
and this quality of detachment is the most serious 
obstacle to young people in their study of the 
sciences. 

A third difficulty which indeed runs through 
the entire front-of-progress of the human under- 
standing is that the primitive mind stuff of a 
young man must be rehabilitated in entirely new 
relations in fitting the young man for the condi- 
tions of modern life. Every science teacher 
knows how much coercion is required for so little 



THE STUDY OF SCIENCE. 55 

of this rehabilitation; but the bare possibility of 
the process is a remarkable fact, and that it is 
possible to the extent of bringing a Newton or a 
Pasteur out of a hunting and fishing ancestry is 
indeed wonderful. Everyone is familiar with 
the life history of a butterfly, how it lives first 
as a caterpillar and then undergoes a complete 
transformation into a winged insect. It is, of 
course, evident that the bodily organs of a cater- 
pillar are not at all suited to the needs of a 
butterfly, the very food (of those species which 
take food) being entirely different. As a matter 
of fact almost every portion of the bodily struc- 
ture of the caterpillar is dissolved as it were, 
into a formless pulp at the beginning of the 
transformation, and the organization of a flying 
insect then grows out from a central nucleus very 
much as a chicken grows in the food-stuff of an 
tgg. So it is in the development of a young 
man. In early childhood the individual, if he 
has been favored by fortune, exercises and de- 
velops more or less extensively the primitive in- 
stincts and modes of the race in a free out-door 
life, and the result is so much mind-stuff to be 
dissolved and transformed with more or less 
coercion and under more or less constraint into 
an effective mind of the twentieth-century type. 



56 bill's school and mine. 

A fourth difficulty is that the possibility of the 
rehabilitation of mind-stuff has grown up as a 
human faculty almost solely on the basis of lan- 
guage, and the essence of this rehabilitation lies 
in the formation of ideas; whereas a very large 
part of physical science is a correlation in 
mechanisms. 

The best way of meeting this quadruply diffi- 
cult situation in the teaching of elementary 
physics is to relate the teaching as much as pos- 
sible to the immediately practical and intimate 
things of life, and to go in for suggestiveness as 
the only way to avoid a total inhibition of the 
sense that is born with a young man. Such a 
method is certainly calculated to limber up our 
theories and put them all at work, the pragmatic 
method, our friends the philosophers call it, a 
method which pretends to a conquering destiny. 



THE DISCIPLINE OF WORK. 



The first object of all work — not the principal one, but 
the first and necessary one — is to get food, clothes, lodging, 
and fuel. 

But it is quite possible to have too much of all these 
things. I know a great many gentlemen, who eat too large 
dinners; a great many ladies, who have too many clothes, 
I know there is lodging to spare in London, for I have 
several houses there myself, which I can't let. And I know 
there is fuel to spare everywhere, since we get up steam to 
pound the roads with, while our men stand idle ; or drink till 
they can't stand, idle, or otherwise. 

RUSKIN. 



Two generations ago school was supple- 
mented by endless opportunity for play, and 
children had to work about the house and farm 
more and more as they grew to maturity. Play 
and work were in those days as plentiful as sun- 
shine and air, and it is no wonder that educa- 
tional ideals were developed taking no account 
of them. But we cling to these old ideals at the 
present time when children have no opportunity 
to play, when there is an almost complete ab- 
sence of old fashioned chores about the home, 
when boys never see their fathers at work, and 
when the only opportunity for boys and girls to 
work outside the home is to face the certainty of 
reckless exploitation! What a piece of stupid- 
ity! Our entire educational system, primary 
and secondary, collegiate and technical, is sick 
with inconsequential bookishness, and school 
work has become the most inefficient of all the 
organized efforts of men. 

Yes but we have our Manual Training Schools 
and out college courses in Shop Work and Shop 
Inspection. Away with such scholastic shams! 
The beginnings of manual training must indeed 
be provided for in school; paper cutting, sewing 

59 



6o bill's school and mine. 

and whittling. But from the absurdity of an 
Academic Epitome of Industry may the good 
Lord deliver us! And he will deliver us, never 
fear, for the law of economy is His law too. 
The greatest educational problem of our time is 
to make use of commercial and industrial estab- 
lishments as schools to the extent that they are 
schools. 

As a teacher the writer recognizes every year 
more and more the ineffectiveness of the study 
of the physical and mathematical sciences with- 
out the accompaniment of shop and factory- 
work; and next to the direct support and out- 
right control of higher education by the people, 
the most important thing is that the discipline of 
work come again to its own in our entire system 
of education. 

This book is dedicated to the kind of educa- 
tion that is proving itself at the University of 
Cincinnati. 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 



Prairie born; 
Once his feet touch the slope of Western mountain 
The level road they ever more shall spurn. 
If once he drink from snow-pure crystal fountain 
His thirst shall, ever more consuming, burn 
With deepened draughts from common stream. 

Once his eye catch glimpse of more substantial glory 

Than prairie horizon high piled v^rith clouded foam 

His quickened yearning shall inspire old story 

Of unbounded, deathless realms beyond the sunset — Home! 



There were two of us, a prairie-born tender- 
foot in the person of a sixteen-year-old college 
sophomore and the writer. After months of 
anticipation and planning we hurried away at 
the close of the college term, leaving the prairies 
of Iowa to spend a short vacation in the moun- 
tains; and we arrived in Denver on a perfect, 
cloudless morning in June. 



Since early daylight we had kept an eager 
watch to westward across the even plains to catch 
a first glimpse of the great Front Range of the 
Rocky Mountains with its covering of summer 
snow, and after making some purchases of camp 
supplies we climbed to Capitol Hill in Denver 
to see the foot-hills soften to purple and the 
snow fields melt to liquid gold as the crystal day 
turned to crimson glory with the setting of the 
sun. 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 



65 







This is the land that the sunset washes, 
Those are the Banks of the Yellow Sea 
Where it arose, and whither it rushes 
This is the western mystery." 



66 bill's school and mine. 

Late in the evening we took the train for Love- 
land from which place we were to start on a 
walking trip to Laramie, up in Wyoming. 

In Loveland we purchased a pony and a pack- 
saddle. The pony had never been broken to the 
saddle, and inasmuch as the art of packing has 
always to be learned anew when one has not 
practiced it for several years, both of us were, in 
some respects, as green as the pony, and naturally 
somewhat nervous when we started from Love- 
land. The pony served us well however and at 
the worst only gave us a name for the Bucking 
Horse Pass when we crossed the range of the 
Medicine Bow Mountains from the waters of 
the Grand River to those of the North Platte. 

From Loveland we reached Sprague's Ranch 
in Estes Park, thirty-five miles away, in two days 
of easy travel over a good stage road, encounter- 
ing a snow squall in the high foot hills which 
left us cold and wet at sundown of the first day. 
In Estes Park we stayed three days, fishing, 
running up to timber line as preliminary exer- 
cise, and writing letters. The writer had spent 
two previous summers in Estes Park near 
Sprague's Ranch in company with friends from 
the University of Kansas. 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 6"] 

Camp Acclimatization, 
June 2 1 St. 

My dear little Friend: — 

D. and I reached this place day before yester- 
day. I saw Fred Sprague yesterday. He had 
already learned of our presence in the Park, 
having seen our characteristic hob-nail tracks, 
and, as his mother tells me, he remarked upon 
seeing them that "God's people had come," 
meaning the Kansas boys with whom he became 
acquainted in '86 and '89. 

We have passed thousands of flowers since 
leaving Loveland, white poppies, cactus, blue 
bells, columbine and others more than I can tell. 
The blue bells are of the same kind that you and 
I found near Bloomington several weeks ago. 
It would be very nice if you and I could make 
some of our Saturday excursions in this country. 

I wish I could tell you more of our trip. Of 
course it is scarcely begun as yet, but I know 
pretty well what it will be; hard, for one thing, 
and lonesome, but strangely fascinating. We 
are beginning already to have that attitude 
towards nature which I imagine Indians have, 
namely, the desire to get something to eat out of 
everything we see. [M. had written her brother 
D. at Moraine post ofiice of the pies and cakes 



68 bill's school and mine. 

they were making at home.] This is by no 
means greediness, for a measured appetite is 
essentially incompatible with the conditions of 
Indian life. In fact the only wild animals 
which are not gourmands on occasion are those 
which eat grass. Of course, we are at best only 
Agency Indians, but we shall soon be off our 
reservation. 

Few people realize the utter desolation of 
many parts of the Rocky Mountains; and often 
on my mountain trips, hungry and foot-sore, my 
fancy has turned to what my friend 'Gric* has 
told me of the utterly desolate Funeral Moun- 
tains that border Death Valley in southern Cali- 
fornia, and of the infinite sunshine there. What 
would you think, my little friend, even now 
amid the comforts and joys of home, if you could 
hear a trustworthy account of an actual trip over 
those dreadful Mountains and into that awful 
Valley? 

I hope that the map with the accompanying 
description will help you to a knowledge of the 
geography and geology of this country. I send 
kind regards to your father and mother. 

Your friend, F. 

* See page 71. 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 69 

Starting from Estes Park for the Grand River 
country we stopped over night at Camp Desola- 
tion in Windy Gulch, an enormous amphi- 
theater rising above timber line on the north, 
east, and west, and opening to the south into Big 
Thompson Canyon. The mouth of the Gulch is 
dammed by the lateral moraine of an ancient 
Thompson glacier and behind this dam is a 
level, marshy stretch with a few green spruce 
and thickets of aspen, black alder and mountain 
willow. Near timber line also is a scattered 
fringe of green with dots of white. All the rest 
is a desolate stretch of burned timber. 

Trailing to the head of Windy Gulch in the 
morning we gained the summit of Thompson 
Ridge which we followed in a northwesterly 
direction for about twelve miles ; then we circled 
around the head of Big Thompson river and 
went down to Camp at the head of the Cache la 
Poudre river, precisely on the Continental 
Divide in Milner Pass about two hundred feet 
below timber line with Specimen Mountain im- 
mediately to the north of us. 



^o bill's school and mine. 

Specimen Mountain Camp^ 
June 24th. 
My Dear B: — 

D. and I are going to run down to Grand Lake 
settlement to-morrow for bacon and flour so I 
write this to-day. I have been in camp all 
morning cooking and mending while D. has been 
looking for sheep up in the crater of Specimen 
Mountain. He saw two and shot without effect. 
Specimen Mountain is an extinct volcano and 
sheep come to the crater to lick. I have seen as 
many as a hundred and fifty sheep there at dif- 
ferent times during the four trips that I have 
made to this region, but I have hunted them only 
one day (the first) of the twenty-five that I have 
spent in this camp — ^without success, of course. 

Flowers in profusion are found at these alti- 
tudes already where the shrinking snow drifts 
have exposed the ground to the warm June sun, 
but under the drifts it is yet the dead of winter. 
As the season advances the snow recedes, and 
each newly uncovered strip of ground passes with 
exuberant haste through a cycle of spring. 

We came over from Estes Park yesterday and 
the day before. At one point I carried the 
horse's pack about a quarter of a mile on account 
of steepness of trail and depth of snow, leaving 
the pony under D's guidance to wallow through 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 71 

as best she could. We shall, no doubt, have 
some hard work getting out of the Grand River 
valley to the north over the Medicine Bow but 
we intend to keep at it. We are, of course, likely 
to get cold and wet, tired and hungry. In fact, 
I am neither very dry nor very warm now as I 
write, for it is half snowing and half raining; 
nor hungry (?) for I have just eaten three slices 
of bacon, half a corn cake eight inches in 
diameter and an inch thick, with bacon gravy 
made with flour and water, and nearly a quart of 
strong coffee of syrupy sweetness. I do wish D. 
had killed that sheep this morning! We hope 
to get some trout to-morrow out of Grand River, 
but to see the sheets of water which are being 
shed off the range from rain and melting snow 
makes one feel uncertain of the trout fishing. I 
will close for this time and put this into my 
knapsack. To-morrow D. and I will get our 
"walkins" on bright and early, and pack it to 
Grand Lake. This is a tough country beyond 
imagination. 

Yours sincerely, F. 



72 bill's school and mine. 

When trailing above timber line on our way 
to Specimen Mountain and subsequently we 
were on snow much of the time ; below timber 
line at high altitudes we contended about equally 
with snow and fallen timber; and at middle alti- 
tudes where the timber is heavy and where fires 
have been frequent and disastrous the fallen 
timber alone is quite enough to make travel 
troublesome. Mud and water, fallen and fall- 
ing, we encountered everywhere, but without 
much concern. The greatest vexation to the 
amateur traveler in the Rockies is to slip off a 
log in trying to cross a stream, and thus get wet 
all over, when if one had been reasonable, one 
might have been wet only to the middle. An 
awkward comrade of '89 did this so many times 
that it became a standing joke; but 'Gric, as we 
called him, that is to say Agricola, after his 
father "Farmer" Funston of Kansas, developed 
grit enough to take him through Death Valley 
in southern California, to take him, all alone, 
1,600 miles down the Yukon River in an open 
boat and across 200 miles of unexplored country 
during the winter night to the shores of the 
Arctic Ocean, to take him into the Cuban army, 
where he received three serious wounds, and 
finally to take him through the Philippines 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. "JZ 

with our Volunteer Army where he captured 
Aguinaldo. 

From Specimen Mountain Camp in Milner 
Pass we made our way to Grand River over an 
extremely difficult trail, nearly breaking our 
pony's leg in the fallen timber, and, finding it 
impossible to reach Grand Lake by the river 
trail without wetting our pack, we went into 
{Mosquito) camp and did our week's washing. 
The next day we left our pony, and made a flying 
round trip of thirty miles to the settlement. The 
next morning, hoping to escape the mosquitoes, 
we moved camp several miles up stream and in 
the afternoon we climbed to the summit of one 
of the high spurs of a nameless* peak in the 
range of the Medicine Bow. We got back to 
camp late in the evening in a sharp rain, which 
continued all night. 

The next morning promised fair weather, and 
after some hesitation, we packed up for the trip 
over to North Park. Starting at eight o'clock 
we reached the deserted mining camp, Lulu, at 
eleven, having forded Grand River seven times, 

* A volcanic mass of rugged spurs radiating from a great central 
core; points and ridges rising, beautifully red, from immense fields 
of snow. D. and the writer call it Mt. McDonald, but having made 
no survey, the purely sentimental report which we could send to 
the map makers in Washington would not suffice as a record there. 



74 BILL'S SCHOOL AND MINE. 

the water of it ice cold and swift as an arrow. 
We then began to climb the range, the summit 
of which we reached at three o'clock at the pass 
of the Bucking Horse far above timber line. At 
four o'clock we began the descent into the valley 
of the Michigan fork of the North Platte. The 
rain, until now fitful, became steady and we, 
determined to reach a good camping place, kept 
our pony at a half-trot until eight o'clock, when 
we found a deserted cabin. We were too im- 
patiently hungry to make biscuit, which we ordi- 
narily baked in the frying pan before cooking 
our bacon, so we made our supper of graham 
mush, bacon, bacon gravy and coffee. Next 
morning we found to our dismay that our baking 
powder had been left at the Bucking Horse — 
and no wonder, for our pack had been strewn 
for a quarter of a mile along the trail — so we 
were reduced to mush again for breakfast. 



Gould's Ranch, 
July 7th. 
My Dear B: 

We have just returned from a week's hunt in 
the Medicine Bow Mountains east of here. We 
saw elk, killed a deer, and spent the Fourth of 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 75 

July on a prominent but nameless peak from 
which we got a splendid view. 



After breakfast at Camp Mush, Mr. E. B. 
Gould, a neighboring cattle rancher who has no 
cattle, was attracted by the smoke of our camp- 
fire, and coming up to see us, he invited us to his 
shanty to eat venison. We went. We have now 
been with him a week and we are starting on our 
second carcass. 

Gould lives by hunting and trapping, and by 
odd work in the Park during the haying season. 
He came to this country years ago with a hunt- 
ing party and has been hunting ever since. 
Several years ago he took up a claim in the ex- 
treme southeastern corner of North Park con- 
veniently near to hunting grounds in the Medi- 
cine Bow. He gave up his claim, for good, a 
year ago, and made an overland trip to New 
Mexico. That did not satisfy him either, so 
now he is back in his old shanty again. He 
thinks we are the toughest "tender-foots" he 
ever saw. He approves of us, there is no doubt 
about that, and he has pulled up his stakes to 
travel with us just for the pleasure of our com- 
pany! He takes great interest in D's knowledge 
of bugs, and D. and he are both real hunters each 



76 bill's school and mine. 

according to his experience. Before we fell in 
with Gould I could persuade D. to wanton exer- 
tion in the way of mountain climbing but now I 
am in the minority, but the hunters propose, with 
a flourish, the scaling of every peak that comes 
in sight. 

I had a spell of mountain fever just before the 
Fourth and Gould dosed me with sage brush tea, 
the vilest concoction I ever had to take. 

Gould is not accustomed to walk except when 
actually hunting, so he has a riding horse, and a 
trusty old pack animal whose minimum name is 
" G — d — you Jack," and whose maximum name 
(and load) is indeterminate. Gould is going 
with us to spend a week in the Range of the 
Rabbit's Ear, far to the west across North Park. 
He has an old wagon which, if it holds together, 
will save D. and me some tedious steps across the 
desert, for indeed this "park" is a desert. We 
shall pass through Walden, the metropolis and 
supply station of the Park. 

Yours, F, 

From D's Mother. 

My precious boy: 

I trust you will excuse me for using this paper 
but I am up stairs, and no one [is] here to bring 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. ']^ 

me any other. They tell me I need not wonder 
that we do not hear from you and I shall try not 
to be disappointed if we do not hear for a while. 
Nevertheless my dear boy, the uncertainty I feel 
in regard to your safety will make a letter very 
welcome indeed. Perhaps I would have more 
courage if I were strong. For five days I have 
been very uncomfortable. I am sitting up some 
today for the first [time] and hope soon to be 
well as usual. 

We were exceedingly glad to hear from you 
from Grand Lake. I cannot, however, say that 
the account of your experience by stone slide* 
and river have lessened my anxiety. I am writ- 
ing now, Thursday, in bed. I have been quite 
poorly again. We shall not look now for a letter 
from you but hope to see you face to face before 
many days. May God bless and keep you! 
Give our love to Mr. F. All join me in ten- 
derest love to you. 

Your devoted mother. 

* The crater of Specimen Mountain is worn away on one side 
by water, and the crater now forms the head of a ragged gulch. 
Near the head of this gulch is a slope of loose stone, as steep as 
loose stone can lie, which has a vertical height of 1500 or 2000 feet. 



78 bill's school and mine. 

At Walden we laid in a fresh supply of flour 
and bacon, and canned goods, especially canned 
fruit, to last us while we stayed with the wagon. 
We then pushed on to the west, striking camp on 
the West Fork of the North Platte, where we 
stayed two nights. Here we tried hard a third 
time for trout without success, but we turned off 
the water from an irrigating ditch and captured 
a large number of " squaw fish" (suckers) . 

From Camp Chew we made our way well up 
into the foothills of the Range of the Rabbit's 
Ear, and then packed our animals, minimum 
Jack and our pony, and pushed up the range over 
the worst trail we had yet encountered, through 
an absolute wilderness of fallen timber. Rain 
with fog set in as we approached timber line, 
and we were forced to go into camp early to 
wait for morning. Morning came with fog and 
rain, and we spent the entire day hunting trail, 
only to go into camp again towards evening. 
The next day, however, came clear and we made 
our way over the range, through Frying Pan 
Meadow, and reached camp down on Elk river 
towards evening without difficulty. We found 
good fishing here at last and great numbers of 
deer but no elk. After three rainy days in Elk 
River Camp, one of which was spent jerking 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 



79 



~ '^-^.F^^'- ry\---^'^^^tyir^^:^^^ -'''■'■'yJjM 



'-"fr'r'^S:^-^ 




Looking North Across Specimen Mountain 
Stone Slide. 



8o bill's school and mine. 

venison of D.'s killing, we packed up and made 
the return trip over the range in one day of hard 
travel, going into camp by the shore of a shallow 
pond well out on the barren level of North Park. 
The next morning we parted company with 
Gould, and in two days we made sixty stage road 
miles across North Park and over the northern 
portion of the Medicine Bow Mountains to 
Woods post office at the edge of the Laramie 
plains, twenty-five miles from Laramie. 

We had intended walking through to Lar- 
mie, but ninety miles and two mountain ranges 
in three days, not to mention the writer's terribly 
blistered feet, had temporarily taken some of the 
ambition out of us, and after some fine diplomacy 
D. and the writer each found that the other was 
willing to descend to stage coach riding. We 
accordingly sold our fine little pony for five 
dollars, packed our outfit in a compact bundle 
which we wrapped in our small tent (which had 
been used as a smoke-house for curing venison at 
Elk River Camp), and took the stage for 
Laramie. 

At Laramie we took the train for home, and 
with eyes eagerly awake we watched for hun- 
dreds of miles an increasing luxuriance of vege- 
tation which reached its climax in the marvel- 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 



8i 




In the Range of the Rabbit's Ear. 



82 bill's school and mine. 

ously rich, endless, undulating fields of eastern 
Nebraska and Iowa: 

This Is the land that the sunset washes 
These are the Waves of the Yellow Sea ; 
Where it arose and whiter it rushes, 
This Is the western mystery. 

We had been away from home for thirty-three 
days, and in the mountains for thirty-one nights 
—Indians reckon by nights ; and we had tramped 
more than three hundred and fifty miles from 
Loveland to the edge of the Laramie plains. A 
large portion of the time was spent at high alti- 
tudes where the weather is not lamb-like in June, 
and no small portion of the three hundred and 
fifty miles was mud and water, snow and fallen 
timber, through a country as rough, perhaps, as 
is to be found anywhere, and as interesting. 
The only way to study Geography is with the 
feet! No footless imagination can realize the 
sublimity of western Mountain and Plain. 
Nothing but a degree of hardship can measure 
their wide-spread chaos and lonely desolation, 
and only the freshened eagerness of many morn- 
ings can perceive their matchless glory. 

We reached home weather-beaten almost be- 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 



83 




Near Frying Pan Meadow. 



84 bill's school and mine. 

yond recognition, but in robust health, especially 
D., who had actually gained in weight during 
the trip. From the railroad station we carried 
our outfit, and venison, two miles to the college 
grounds, reaching D.'s home about midnight. 

Here our madly exuberant spirits were sud- 
denly checked by finding that the illness of D.'s 
mother had become extremely serious. How- 
ever she was determined to see us both — to give 
a last approval. 

" We never know how high we are 
Till we are called to rise; 
And then, if we are true to plan, 
Our statures touch the skies. 

" The heroism we recite 

Would be a daily thing, 
Did not ourselves the cubits warp 
For fear to be a king." 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. 85 



After four days D.'s mother died. It fell to 
B. and F. to make a sculptor's plaster mask, and 
photographs ; and to F. to watch overnight — and 
hasten to the woods in the morning. 

" The bustle in a house 
The morning after death 
Is solemnest of industries 
Enacted upon earth. 

" The sweeping up the heart 
And putting love away 
We shall not want to use again 
Until Eternity." 



86 bill's school and mine. 



A beautiful Campanile now stands on the 
college campus erected in memory of D.'s 
mother by the state of Iowa; and from this 
memory-tower a chime of bells 

Greets 

Those who pass in joy 

And those who pass in sorrow; 

As we have passed, 

Our time. 



PART OF AN EDUCATION. Sy 



Superiority to fate 

Is difficult to learn. 

'Tis not conferred by any, 

But possible to earn 

A pittance at a time, 

Until, to her surprise. 

The soul with strict economy 

Subsists till Paradise." 



THE USES OF HARDSHIP. 



Did you chance, my friends, any of you, to see, the other 
day, the 83rd number of the Graphic, with the picture of the 
Queen's concert in it? All the fine ladies sitting so trimly, 
and looking so sweet, and doing the whole duty of woman — 
wearing their fine clothes gracefully; and the pretty singer, 
white-throated, warbling " Home sweet home " to them, so 
morally, and melodiously! Here was yet to be our ideal of 
virtuous life, thought the Graphic! Surely we are safe back 
with our virtues in satin slippers and lace veils — and our 
Kingdom of Heaven is come with observation! 

RUSKIN. 



Ruskin has said that the children of the rich 
often get the worst education to be had for 
money, whereas the children of the poor often 
get the best education for nothing. And the 
poor man's school is hardship. 

It is generally admitted that wealthy Amer- 
ican parents are too indulgent towards their chil- 
dren. However this may be, many an American 
father is determined that his sons shall not go 
through what he himself went through as a boy, 
forgetting that the hardships of his youth were 
largely the hardships of pioneer life which have 
vanished forever. No boy with good stuff in 
him and with a fair education unmixed with 
extravagant habits of living can possibly have 
more hardship nowadays than is good for him. 
Every young man must sooner or later stand by 
himself; and hardship, which in its essence is to 
be thrown on one's own resources, is the best 
school. 

But the most alluring school of hardship, a 
sort of Summer School of the University of 
Hard Knocks, is a walking trip into the moun- 
tains to the regions of summer snow, carrying 
one's whole outfit on one's back as did the Kansas 

91 



92 bill's school and mine. 

boys of '89, or indulging in the ownership of a 
pack-pony and a miner's tent as did D. and the 
writer in '95. The hardships of such a trip are 
of the old old type, the facing of all kinds of 
weather and the hunting for food, and they 
waken a thousand-fold deeper response than the 
most serious hunt for a job in a modern city. 



THE PUBLIC SCHOOL 



Denmark Hill, April ist, 187 1. 
My Friends: 

It cannot but be pleasing to us to reflect, this day, that if 
we are often foolish enough to talk English without under- 
standing it, we are often wise enough to talk Latin without 
knowing it. For this month retains its pretty Roman name, 
which means the month of Opening; of the light in the days, 
and the life in the leaves, and of the voices of birds, and of the 
hearts of men. 

And being the month of Manifestation, it is pre-eminently 
the month of Fools; — for under the beatific influence of 
moral sunshine, or Education, the Fools always come out first. 

But what is less pleasing to reflect upon, this spring morn- 
ing, is, that there are some kinds of education which may be 
described, not as moral sunshine, but as moral moonshine; 
and that, under these. Fools come out both First — and Last. 

We have, it seems, now set our opening hearts much on 
this one point, that we will have education for all men and 
women now, and for all girls and boys that are to be. 
Nothing, indeed, can be more desirable, if only we determine 
also what kind of education we are to have. It is taken for 
granted that any education must be good ; — that the more of 
it we get, the better; that bad education only means little 
education ; and that the worst we have to fear is getting none. 
Alas that is not at all so. Getting no education is by no 
means the worst thing that can happen to us. The real thing 
to be feared is getting a bad one. 

RUSKIN. 



The recent exchange of visits between Penn- 
sylvanians and Wisconsinites has resulted in the 
organization of an association for the carrying 
out of the Wisconsin Idea in Pennsylvania; but 
the New York Evening Post, in commenting 
upon the Pennsylvania version of the Wisconsin 
Idea, calls attention to the fact that in Wisconsin 
the idea is carried into effect by public agencies, 
whereas the Pennsylvania version is to be exe- 
cuted privately! The Evening Post did not, 
indeed, say execute; I, myself, have introduced 
the word, because it so exactly conveys the mean- 
ing of the Post's criticism. 

Why is it that so many good people take up 
things like the Boy Scout movement, privately, 
never giving a moment's thought to our rusting 
school machinery? Why are we so privately 
minded as to enthuse over Mrs. so-and-so's out- 
of-the-city movement for children, never think- 
ing of the potentialities of establishments like 
Girard College? The trouble is that we Amer- 
icans have never learned to do things together; 
we still have the loyal but lazy habit of looking 
expectantly for a King, and, of course, we get a 
Philadelphia Ring, the lowest Circle in the 

95 



96 bill's school and mine. 

Inferno of the Worst; and all the while our 
might-be doers of good affect a kind of private 
Kingship, and sink into a mire of idiotic* im- 
potence. 

The seven wonders of the world all fade into 
insignificance in comparison with one great fact 
in modern government, a fact so fundamental 
that we seldom think of it, namely, the great fact 
of taxation. Funds sufficient to meet every 
public need of the community flow automat- 
ically into the public treasury. This is indeed 
a very remarkable thing, but it seems almost 
ludicrous when we consider that wasteful ex- 
penditure of public funds is the universal rule, 
and that good people everywhere are struggling 
to do public things privately 1 Was there ever 
before two such horns to a dilemma? Fog 
horns, grown inwardly on every Pennsylvanian's 
head! When a city of 10,000 people has an 
annual school budget of $60,000, it is evident 
that everything can be done that needs to be 
done for the schooling of children. 

I believe that the school day should be in- 
creased to 8 hours, the school week to 6 days, 
and the school year to 12 months; with elastic 

* Among the Greeks an idiot was a man who thought only of his 
private affairs, a privately minded man. 



THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. 97 

provision for home work and out-of-town visit- 
ing. I believe that school activities should in- 
clude a wide variety of simple hand work, and a 
great deal of out-door play, with ample provision 
for the things that are done by Boy Scouts and 
Camp Fire Girls; and when children are old 
enough and strong enough to begin their voca- 
tional training, their school activities should be 
combined with work in office and factory. Let 
no one imagine that such a program is imprac- 
ticable; for in the city, school is the sum of all 
influences outside the home, and the school day 
is now more than eight hours, the school week 
is more than six days, and school lasts the whole 
year through ; these are the facts, say what you 
will; and everything is in a dreadful state of 
confusion — excepting only book work. It is 
time for us to think of the public school as in- 
cluding everything which makes for the efficient 
organization and orderly control of the juvenile 
world. The Junior Municipality, which has 
been recently proposed, added to existing school 
work with provision for simple manual training 
and outdoor play would constitute a fairly com- 
plete realization of this wide conception of the 
public school, and any narrower conception is 
hopeless in a modern city. 



98 bill's school and mine. 

As to educational values there is a widespread 
misunderstanding. Imagine a teacher taking his 
children on a hike two or three times a week all 
Winter long! Every parent, hoping for his chil- 
dren to escape the necessity of work, would howl 
in stupid criticism " Is that what I send my chil- 
dren to school for?" Or the school superin- 
tendent might have the point of view of the 
excessively teachy teacher, who, in a recent dis- 
cussion of the Boy Scout idea, admitted that out- 
door activity would be a good thing — provided 
something were done to justify it! — and that 
something was understood to be bookish! As to 
vocational training, on the other hand, we must 
reckon with the manufacturer who will not 
train workmen for his competitors, but who 
expects his competitors to train workmen for 
him. And we also must reckon with the min- 
isterial member of the school board who meets a 
proposal for vocational training with the ques- 
tion "How then will you educate for life? 

" Ich ging im Walde 
So fuer mich hin 
Und nichts zu suchen 
Das war mein Sinn." 

Children who go for nothing will get every- 
thing; and to be fit for service is to be fit for life. 



